This week has definitely felt Spring-y! Lots of yard work was done to spruce up our Airbnbs, some pansies were bought for a bit of color, and yesterday I decided to clean up my main flower bed even though my back wanted a rest. Glad I did, because last night we had an unexpected thunderstorm and now this morning the sun is shining bright and illuminating all of the florescent green tips. The garlic is growing, the Hellebores are pink and blooming, and the new garlic chives are telling me its time to cut down the old stalks. I think the seed heads are so beautiful, so I leave them up all winter.
In the woods this week, we saw a Mourning Clock butterfly - that was a first for us! We heard Spring Peepers and Wood frogs and spotted the first Wood frog eggs. We have been seeing muskrats, a Great Blue heron, Mallards, Canada Geese, and Wood ducks at a marshy wetland on the way to the barn. It is always exciting to see the male Wood ducks with their rainbow of colors.
And in our own yard, the chickens have taken over. With the loss of our prey-driven Corgi, Ruby, over the winter, we now only have Lola, the 16 year old Corgi who has always been more interested in the chicken poop, than the chicken, and Wallace, our Romanian rescue who isn't prey driven either. Last year, one of our chickens was being picked on by the other two and so we had to segregate her in chicken isolation. After her head feathers grew back (her supposed friends had pecked her head until it bled), she still chose to be the loner and she started hopping the fence. Even though Ruby was old and slower, she still would go after the chicken, so we didn't encourage the chicken's free roaming ways. During the snowy winter, she kept close to the coop, but just in the past two weeks, she started hopping the fence again - that whole grass is greener thing. Well, then we noticed one day that there were two chickens in the yard for short periods of time. Then this week, we decided, "Why not?" It is pretty fun to see them in the yard - we'll be reading on the sofa and all of a sudden this black streak will shoot across the yard or approach the back door. We do get regular visits from a Cooper's hawk in our yard, but these ladies are big enough to be left alone. And the Red-tailed hawks in our neighborhood have never shown interest in our chickens. We still have two bantams that are locked up in an Eglu because they would definitely make a tasty hawk lunch!
I'll leave you with a little more green. This small baby blanket/play mat was knit with 100% wool in "Grass" green. Happy Spring!
